What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

[arknor]

'Special interest'

Special interests

Special interests describe an interest that generates an urge to learn everything about that interest, or to dedicate some or all your spare time to learning more about it.

www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk

Who wrote that website.... someone whos not autistic and has no experience of it?

"special interest" is nonsense, its "hyper focused interest" and they usually last anywhere from 2 weeks to maybe 8 before the person usually finds something else fascinating.

My adult son has a stupid amount of playtime in some games though.

It also states

they bring autistic people much joy and can be a positive influence on the rest of their lives - helping them develop friendships, determining what they might study or focusing their career choice.

only 22% of autistic people had a job as of 2021 stats and Idoubt you would find many who find "joy" in their life, most seem depressed and abandoned by society

Autistic people don;t really develop friendships because the majority get burnt out so fast from social interaction they end up distant and losing contact and then won't do anything to maintain it.


Oh I just read the "about us" seems their only experience is with autistic children...... (roll eyes cos no one cares about autistic adults and theres 0 help if you need it)

 

[Noxia]

I didn't post the article because of its medical validity. I posted it as a joke.

Also, as an autistic adult (diagnosed in adulthood) I don't really relate to anything you've said, it is a spectrum after all.

I'm sorry you feel there is no help available. I get a lot of support through work and in fact we really embrace the neurodiversity especially in defence sector. So again, can't really relate.
Outside of work though, I don't really feel I need it, I adapt to stuff as best I can and not really sure what anyone else could do for me.

Edit. Actually yes on the friends thing. I can happily not see people for a long long time and have no need or ability to have a large social circle. Quality > quantity there.

Anyhoo, people want to talk about RT, not watch Autismo the clown show. Happy to talk about any of it in a more appropriate place.

 

[mrk]

Doom Eternal really is the benchmark for how ray tracing is supposed to be done, everything metal looks metal, every shiny metal surface reflects everything in high detail, there's no RT lighting delay either in those reflections from rockets/explosions and stuff, and the framerate remains high at all times. It was over 100fps on my 3080 Ti at 3440x1440, and it's ~200fps on 4K on the 4090.

It's just supremely excellent and looks great in motion.

The specular highlights and reflections off flesh is nice too, sort of subsurface scattering:

DF's tech look at RT in Eternal from 3 years ago:

It's kind of funny how no ohter game since then has managed to get this level of optimisation, iD Tech are masters in this area.

 

[Nexus18]

Looks like you have got to the area I was talking about

When you get there, it really is very impressive, start of the game doesn't show RT of that well given your surroundings but that part is where it really shines:

Of course we had Matt back then saying "see hardly any difference"

 

[humbug]

Doom Eternal really is the benchmark for how ray tracing is supposed to be done, everything metal looks metal, every shiny metal surface reflects everything in high detail, there's no RT lighting delay either in those reflections from rockets/explosions and stuff, and the framerate remains high at all times. It was over 100fps on my 3080 Ti at 3440x1440, and it's ~200fps on 4K on the 4090.

It's just supremely excellent and looks great in motion.

The specular highlights and reflections off flesh is nice too, sort of subsurface scattering:

DF's tech look at RT in Eternal from 3 years ago:

It's kind of funny how no ohter game since then has managed to get this level of optimisation, iD Tech are masters in this area.

IMO Vulkan as opposed to DX12.

I'm actually going to start playing this for real soon, see how my 7800 XT holds up in these heavy RT scenes, i have a feeling it will hold up quite well.

 

[mrk]

Vulkan does seem to be helping, although it's arguably more efficient anyway than DX12.

 

[humbug]

Vulkan is a far better API than DX12, i don't just say that because its built on a foundation AMD created, it runs beautifully on Nvidia too, The Cronos Group were the right people to entrust Mantle to.

DX12 like DX11, 10.... has a universal translation layer, you connect all of your functionality and features to a middle software which is then converted to the GPU, this adds latency and has a performance loss, on top of that how well and efficiently this layer is able to utilize the hardware depends the people programing this layer, Microsoft are in control of that., its not necessarily as good as it can be.

Vulkan is an at or near metal API, functionality and features are connected directly to the GPU architecture, in much the same way consoles are, well at least that's true for the PS5 which is why despite having a significantly slower GPU than the Xbox X runs the same games with a higher resolution and / or settings at higher frame rates, its more performant because they use a similar to metal API. its also why despite in circumstances where a game might be developed for console, like the PS5 its not necessarily best on AMD GPU's, its converted to DX12.

The advantage of the DX12 approach is ease of programing, a lot if not all of that is done for you, so its easy.
The advantages of Vulkan is a better feeling higher performant game, however you do actually need to be a programer to do it, you need to be able to program for Nvidia, AMD archetypes specifically, sometimes you need help from these people to do it.

This is why DX12 is far more prevalent, but Vulkan, when done by a skilled programer is far better.

 

[Xelene]

Vulkan is a far better API than DX12, i don't just say that because its built on a foundation AMD created, it runs beautifully on Nvidia too, The Cronos Group were the right people to entrust Mantle to.

DX12 like DX11, 10.... has a universal translation layer, you connect all of your functionality and features to a middle software which is then converted to the GPU, this adds latency and has a performance loss, on top of that how well and efficiently this layer is able to utilize the hardware depends the people programing this layer, Microsoft are in control of that., its not necessarily as good as it can be.

Vulkan is an at or near metal API, functionality and features are connected directly to the GPU architecture, in much the same way consoles are, well at least that's true for the PS5 which is why despite having a significantly slower GPU than the Xbox X runs the same games with a higher resolution and / or settings at higher frame rates, its more performant because they use a similar to metal API. its also why despite in circumstances where a game might be developed for console, like the PS5 its not necessarily best on AMD GPU's, its converted to DX12.

The advantage of the DX12 approach is ease of programing, a lot if not all of that is done for you, so its easy.
The advantages of Vulkan is a better feeling higher performant game, however you do actually need to be a programer to do it, you need to be able to program for Nvidia, AMD archetypes specifically, sometimes you need help from these people to do it.

This is why DX12 is far more prevalent, but Vulkan, when done by a skilled programer is far better.

Thats not really true, DX12 and Vulkan both build off of Mantle; both API build off of scheduling the GPU and are low level. DX11 managed all of that noise better.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

At least RT is taking less of a hit on recent hardware, I don’t mind it if it doesn’t kill my frames as much. I still don’t notice it in fast pace segments of games. It’s like every evolution of gaming though, I remember the same with tessellation, it was the performance benchmark and killed hardware, but now everything uses it. I’m back to throwing money at hardware, so I don’t really care, bring it on

 

[Nasher]

What most people are saying, it's not worth it.

There is a balance between visuals and performance but RT tips it too far one way for quite a small improvement most of the time.

 

[humbug]

Thats not really true, DX12 and Vulkan both build off of Mantle; both API build off of scheduling the GPU and are low level. DX11 managed all of that noise better.

I think Microsoft would rage against that, i don't really know if that's true or not, AMD have claimed neither would exist without Mantle but the only people who have been, perhaps at least decent enough to publicly thank AMD for giving them Mantle, for free, was the khronos Group. Its how we know.

AMD created Mantle because DX was old, crap and no longer being developed, i'm paraphrasing AMD, not my opinion, tho i share it... as a way to create competition for for it.
Microsoft are not going to want to admit that they have adopted it, if they have, a bit like Intel don't like to admit their CPU's run on AMD64, no ifs about that.

I'm still not sure about it, despite even what AMD say, it might have elements of Mantle but i'm not sure the core of it is as pure Mantle as Vulkan, more a kin to elements of it plugged in to the DirectX core.

I do game development as a hobby, most of what i have read suggests this higher vs lower level difference, and at least one game developer who made the choice in going Vulkan instead of DX12 also reasoning the same.

 

[humbug]

Just thinking about all this, its amazing how small this world is.

Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of Nvidia, 1993, his first job was working at AMD, 1986 to 1993, he is related to Dr Lisa Su, current CEO of AMD, AMD was founded by Jerry Sanders in 1969, Jerry Sanders was a colleague of Gordon Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor, Gordon Moore founded Intel in 1968.

 

[heman]

Just thinking about all this, its amazing how small this world is.

Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of Nvidia, 1993, his first job was working at AMD, 1986 to 1993, he is related to Dr Lisa Su, current CEO of AMD, AMD was founded by Jerry Sanders in 1969, Jerry Sanders was a colleague of Robert Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Moore founded Intel in 1968.

The silicon circle of life!

Re ray-tracing, for me I'd rather turn off and enjoy slightly higher frame rates. Not too bothered by it.

 

[Proto]

More 4K Ray Tracing on a previous generation mid-range card.

 

[Jae-So]

I like RT as a technology but it seems it needs lot of processing power and optimisation to get it to a truly impressive state.
I do think even with it's limited application it makes a difference however.

 

[Proto]

I often find ray tracing on vs off can be like a completely different visual experience.

I also think this is the case for this game, but this can be deceptive given how impressive it already looks with the next gen update.

Here’s the same scene without ray tracing, and the additional use of FSR instead of DLSS for emphasis on performance.

 

[Nexus18]

I think with recent games, even when RT is used fairly "light", the difference is far bigger/more noticeable than RT games from 3-4 years ago (even the heavier ones like spiderman, ratchet and clank etc.) as it is becoming pretty obvious now that devs are focussing less on raster effects e.g. such titles like dogma, first descendant, particularly with shadows where raster version has the bare minimum. I did say this what we would most likely start to see happen more often as time went on and devs got to grips with RT more and newer titles came out Remember when DL 2 came out and the difference in visuals was huge and we had people saying "it's because they have purposely gimped raster effects to make nvidia/rt look good"

 

[TNA]

I think with recent games, even when RT is used fairly "light", the difference is far bigger/more noticeable than RT games from 3-4 years ago (even the heavier ones like spiderman, ratchet and clank etc.) as it is becoming pretty obvious now that devs are focussing less on raster effects e.g. such titles like dogma, first descendant, particularly with shadows where raster version has the bare minimum. I did say this what we would most likely start to see happen more often as time went on and devs got to grips with RT more and newer titles came out Remember when DL 2 came out and the difference in visuals was huge and we had people saying "it's because they have purposely gimped raster effects to make nvidia/rt look good"

The said person sadly is no longer with us. Well not in the GPU section anyway

 

[GhostDog1981]

The said person sadly is no longer with us. Well not in the GPU section anyway

What happened? Who was it?

Even I feel RT is the way of travel. (The more I play Avatar the more I realise we can’t turn it off!?) I’ll be buying a new gpu once RT is predominant in games.

 

[Proto]

I think with recent games, even when RT is used fairly "light", the difference is far bigger/more noticeable than RT games from 3-4 years ago (even the heavier ones like spiderman, ratchet and clank etc.) as it is becoming pretty obvious now that devs are focussing less on raster effects e.g. such titles like dogma, first descendant, particularly with shadows where raster version has the bare minimum. I did say this what we would most likely start to see happen more often as time went on and devs got to grips with RT more and newer titles came out Remember when DL 2 came out and the difference in visuals was huge and we had people saying "it's because they have purposely gimped raster effects to make nvidia/rt look good"

I was thinking the same thing, and even noticed that the RT effect has become so apparent in newer or next gen games, that turning all other settings to low, as I have done in the previous video, has little to no effect on the overall experience.

It’s also true that the base setting is usually more than sufficient to allow for the RT effect to be fully registered. In fact, I checked this before making the video, and couldn't see any meaningful difference between the performance and quality setting for RTGI.

I noticed the same in First Descendant as well.